Opinion: Prosperity gold-copper mine will live up to its name

New gold-copper project near Williams Lake promises to bring new jobs

New mineral-processing equipment has been installed at Taseko’s Gibraltar mine as part of a $700-million investment that will improve efficiencies and make it the third-largest copper concentrator in North America.

Taseko operates the Gibraltar mine near Williams Lake, the second-largest copper concentrator in Canada and by Christmas of this year, the third largest in North America.

We’re proud of what we do — supplying copper to a global market for the past 40 years, employing thousands of people and contributing billions in revenues to local, provincial and national economies.

We are able to do so safely and efficiently because of the highly capable engineering staff and the more than 500 skilled and committed employees working at Gibraltar.

By the end of this year, Taseko will have invested nearly $700 million in new state-of-the-art mining and milling equipment for Gibraltar in just six years, improving efficiencies and providing greater assurance that the mine can continue to produce uninterrupted for 27 more years.

This week, Taseko filed with the federal government an environmental-impact statement (EIS) detailing its proposal to build a new mine in British Columbia, also near Williams Lake.

Called New Prosperity, the large gold-copper project represents a $1.1-billion investment and will increase federal government revenues by $4.30 billion and provincial revenues by $5.52 billion. The project is expected to generate $11 billion in gross domestic product for Canada, will add 57,000 person years of employment to the economy and will have an even greater economic impact than Gibraltar has had over these past 40 years.

At the heart of Taseko’s proposal is a $300-million commitment to mitigate environmental impacts and protect Fish Lake now and in the future. This comprehensive environmental management plan represents the collective effort of multiple environmental engineering firms recognized throughout the world as being among the best in their fields of expertise. The conclusions reached by these experts are that there will be no significant adverse environmental effects associated with New Prosperity. We are confident in these findings.

By large measure, the people of Williams Lake and the Cariboo know what this new mine can mean to their future. They know what’s at stake and have been stirred to action, determined to secure a future of new prosperity for themselves and their families.

Like thousands of other British Columbians who also live in mining communities, they understand why mining matters. They know the greatest value and benefit from mining flows to people. It goes to the employees working at the mine, then to the employees and the companies who sell equipment and services to the mine, then to the communities in which those employees live and raise their families, then to the governments who get taxes on all of that spending and the wages paid and who in turn spend it on people — for hospitals, colleges and universities, police, ambulance, fire protection and for essential infrastructure like highways, ports, bridges, airports and the delivery of public services.

The final steps in the federal environmental assessment process — an in-depth examination of our plan which the government has 235 days to complete — can now be taken.

Taseko looks forward to the public hearing process where people will come to better understand the project, the depth of our commitment to exceptional standards of environmental practice and to the potential New Prosperity holds for the region, the province and for Canada.

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New mineral-processing equipment has been installed at Taseko’s Gibraltar mine as part of a $700-million investment that will improve efficiencies and make it the third-largest copper concentrator in North America.

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